DVD: Doc: 638 Ways to kill Castro

2007, UK DVD, director Dollan Cannell 90mins english subtitles

A political documentary which explores the relationship between the US and Cuba told through the numerous and increasingly bizarre attempts to kill Fidel Castro. The assassination plots are recounted by the people on both sides who were there: those who tried to kill Castro and those who thwarted their efforts. Also includes 70 mins of interviews with the director, ex US president Jimmy Carter, Ricardo Alarcon, Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen Republican congresswoman and other key people.

£18.99 inc p&p

This informative DVD is a devastating eye – opener, examining the various ways America and the exiled Cuban community have attempted to assassinate the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

Ever since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel and the Cubans have been a thorn in the side of their North American neighbour, never more so than during the Cold War era, when Cuba was forced to ally itself with the Soviet Union, in response to American aggression.

Filmmaker Dollan Connell’s documentary unearths some of the many CIA and Cuban anti-Castro elements attempts to assassinate Fidel, including some of the more ludicrous plots, such as exploding cigars and injecting poison into his pens, to attempting to spread the rumour that Fidel was the Anti-Christ, by using a submerged submarine firing flares into the night sky above the island. The real meat of the documentary though, is the number of remarkable interviews with some of the most brutal and zealous participants in the war against Castro and the Cuban people. Men such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, both of whom are proud and even boastful about their acts of terrorism against Cuba and utterly without remorse. What is truly astonishing about such terrorists is the extent to which they appear to have had the support of the exiled Cuban community in Florida and that such support extended even to the White House, where both Bush senior and junior have protected these criminals from justice. So much for the “if you harbour a terrorist, you’re a terrorist” mantra!

“638 ways to kill Castro” is alternatively a comical and chilling documentary and well worth watching.